Stravinsky

by Stephen Walsh

  13 See his letter to Boosey and Hawkes of 21 July 1953, in SSCIII, 375–6.

  14 See Craft, “Stravinsky in Albion,” in M&C, 200, originally part of a lecture delivered to the Royal Philharmonic Society in London, 15 October 1998. Craft reported that the medal had gone missing at the time of Stravinsky’s move to New York in 1969. But the baton had survived and was on display at the lecture.

  15 Postcard of 1 June 1954, reproduced in ASS, 43.

  16 Letter of 31 May 1954, in DB, 174.

  17 SCF (94), 110.

  18 Letter of 13 May 1954 (PSS).

  19 Letter of 21 June 1954 (PSS).

  20 See Piovesan’s letter of 30 October, and Stravinsky’s reply of 5 November (both PSS).

  21 The sketches for the Postludium are dated, simply, June.

  22 Stravinsky sent the original pair of songs to Douglas Gibson at Chester’s on 15 June, then announced his decision to add the second pair in a letter of 18 August (PSS).

  23 He announced the completion of the Balmont scoring in a letter to Roth, 7 July 1954. The new version of the Podblyudniye choruses is first mentioned in a letter to Gibson of 14 July, and they were sent on the 28th (PSS).

  24 See Dorothy Lamb Crawford, Evenings On and Off the Roof, 104–5.

  25 Letter of 14 July.

  26 Letter of 13 August 1954, in SSCI, 289.

  27 SCF (94), 110.

  28 Program note for the dance premiere of Agon, New York, 1 December 1957, quoted in SPD, 429–30. A page of the draft is reproduced in facsimile in Irene Alm, “Stravinsky, Balanchine, and Agon: An Analysis Based on the Collaborative Process,” Journal of Musicology, 7 (1989), 257–8.

  29 See Kirstein’s letter to Stravinsky of 31 August 1953, in SSCI, 287.

  30 See his letter to Kirstein, 26 August 1954, where he gives the timing as twenty-six minutes. This is about four minutes too long. Balanchine recalled that they had “decided that the whole thing should last about twenty minutes.” But this is a much later memory. See 101 Stories of the Great Ballets (New York: Anchor Books, 1989), quoted in Irene Alm, op. cit., 256.

  31 DB, 175. See also Craft, “Stravinsky and Dylan Thomas,” in Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 59.

  32 Letter of 25 August 1954 (PSS).

  33 See Crawford, Evenings On and Off the Roof, 310, note 104, quoting a memoir by the bassoonist Don Christlieb.

  34 Ibid., 149.

  35 Not all Stravinsky’s friends were as “emotioned” by the occasion as he was (see Craft, “Stravinsky and Dylan Thomas,” in Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 58). Isherwood attended feeling ill with “pains in the penis, bladder and rectum,” and found the In Memoriam “almost insultingly feeble—coming right after the magnificent voice of Dylan himself, on a record.” But then, he adds, “how I loathe concerts,” and admits that the audience “contained several people I dislike meeting.” Diaries, Volume One: 1939–1960, 468.

  36 ImpLif, 137–8.

  37 SCF (94), 107.

  38 Morton, “Stravinsky at Home,” in Pasler (ed.), Confronting Stravinsky, 343–4.

  39 See Stravinsky to Kirstein, letter of 13 August 1954, in SSCI, 289. Sacher’s letter of 29 July (in PSS) is primarily a response to Stravinsky’s congratulations on the success of the Glyndebourne Rake’s Progress that month, which Sacher had conducted. Stravinsky probably regarded the commission as mere politesse.

  40 Letter of 29 November 1954 (PSS).

  41 Craft had conducted the new version of the Podblyudniye choruses, now retitled Four Russian Peasant Songs, at a Monday Evening on 11 October.

  42 Letter of 6 November 1954, in SSCIII, 384.

  43 Letter of 4 December 1954 (PSS).

  44 Letter of 16 December 1954, in SSCI, 290.

  45 SCF (94), 113. Craft writes as if he and Auden discussed the project in Stravinsky’s absence, but DB, 177, suggests that they all dined together that evening. The actual diary is in truth much less clear in its layout than the neat text of DB implies (which may excuse DB for saying that Lucia Davidova came to tea, whereas the diary says they went to her apartment for tea). What probably happened is that Auden came early to discuss texts with Craft before the latter went out, as he indicates, to see Menotti’s Saint of Bleecker Street. Later, Menotti came back to the Gladstone Hotel with Craft. Auden (and Kallman) meanwhile stayed to dinner. None of this matters much, of course, but it once again indicates the need to treat Craft’s various texts with caution. For instance, it is impossible to decide from SCF or DB whether Stravinsky went to the Menotti or not, which is a matter of some slight biographical, and possibly musical, interest.

  46 Stravinsky expressed his doubts in a letter to Munch of 9 February 1955, but all the same began composing on the 18th and sent the finished score to David Adams in Booseys’ New York office on the 23rd. He had previously worked a two-part canon on the well-known tune in June 1951, when Samuel Barber asked him to harmonize the piece as a 75th-birthday present for Mary Curtis Bok. See SSCIII, 387–8, note 40, which includes a transcription of the canon. The Greeting Prelude was duly performed, alongside Milhaud’s Pensée amicale, at the end of a Beethoven concert conducted in Boston by Monteux on 4 April 1955, the actual day of his eightieth birthday. The birthday pieces themselves were conducted by Munch.

  47 SCF (94), 113; Isherwood, Diaries, 4 77.

  48 SCF (94), 113.

  49 For two separate but clearly related accounts of the meeting, see Conv, 90, and SCF (94), 119. If SCF is a genuine journal then it virtually proves Craft’s authorship of this passage of Conv (unless Stravinsky read Craft’s diary to refresh his own memory). If not, then it might derive from it. Neither of these possibilities is particularly encouraging in the troublesome matter of textual candor.

  50 The contract is dated March 1955.

  51 SCF (94), 121.

  52 SCF (94), 123.

  53 Letter of 14 May 1955, in SSCIII, 388–9. On the 13th he had written to Theodore asking him to find and send him a copy of the Vulgate, but on the 17th he wrote again that he had found a copy in Los Angeles (PSS).

  22 AN ECHO CHAMBER BY CANDLELIGHT

  1 Information from DB, 179, and note 7, and private communications from Milène Marion and Denise Strawinsky. Mrs. Marion recalled the applicant as a friend of Edward James, but I have accepted the indication in DB that it was Barrie (who was in any case, no doubt, a friend of James).

  2 “A Concert for Saint Mark,” The Score (December 1956), 35–51.

  3 Numerate readers will notice that this parallel falls down on the identity of the first and last domes. It would only work if St. Mark’s had four main domes, rather than five. Significantly, when I asked Craft about the analogy standing in the nave of St. Mark’s in 1995, he no longer seemed sure about it.

  4 Johannes Ockeghem (London: Sheed & Ward, 1953); “The Treatment of Dissonance in Ockeghem,” in E. Krenek (ed.), Hamline Studies in Musicology, 2 (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Co., 1945), 1–26.

  5 SCF (94), 121-2; see also ImpLif, 140. Stravinsky confirmed the new title in a letter to Roth of 27 July: see SSCIII, 390.

  6 Igor Stravinsky, “Foreword,” in H. Eimert and K. Stockhausen (eds.), Die Reihe, 2: Anton Webern (2nd rev. Eng. edition, Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser, 1959), vol. 7. The foreword is dated “June 1955” in Stravinsky’s hand.

  7 H. Isaac: Choralis constantinus II, ed. A von Webern, DTÖ, xxxii, Jahrgang xvi/1 (1909).

  8 SCF (72), 64; the remark was retained in essence in SCF (94), but in a slightly altered context.

  9 Craft, “Influence or Assistance?” in Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 44. The article had first appeared under the title “Assisting Stravinsky,” in Atlantic Monthly (December 1982), 69–74, but at that stage lacked the reference to Harold Bloom and gave the (slightly earlier) Septet as the starting point of the influence in question. Such modifications are entirely typical of Craft, and give some idea of his unreliability as a historical witness.

  10 See his letter to Roth of 18 October 1955, in SSCIII, 392.


  11 Letter to Roth, 18 October.

  12 See his letter to Roth of 23 November 1955 (PSS); also Stravinsky’s to Roth of 10 November, in SSCIII, 394.

  13 Letter of 10 November.

  14 Letters of 18 December and 25 November 1955, respectively; SSCIII, 395.

  15 Letter of 10 November.

  16 Letter of 31 October 1955 (PSS).

  17 See Roth’s letter to Stravinsky of 2 February 1956 (PSS).

  18 As copied into Roth’s letter of 2 February.

  19 Letter of 11 February 1956 (PSS).

  20 Letter from Piovesan to Roth, transmitted to Stravinsky by Roth in his letter of 14 February (PSS).

  21 Or so Stravinsky reported in his letter to Roth of 25 February 1956 (PSS).

  22 Letter to Roth of 1 May 1956, in SSCIII, 398–9.

  23 See Roth’s letter to Stravinsky of 25 April 1956; also Piovesan to Stravinsky, 7 May (PSS), quite forgetting his May 1954 idea of a shared concert.

  24 See, respectively, Stravinsky’s telegram of 16 May to Piovesan as copied into his letter of that date to Roth (SSCIII, 399–400); Piovesan’s letters to Stravinsky of 6 and 10 June; and Stravinsky’s telegram to Piovesan of 14 June (PSS).

  25 The first occasion, a shared concert at Ojai in which Stravinsky conducted Les Noces, had just taken place that May. See below.

  26 See Nabokov’s letter to Stravinsky of 22 November 1955 (PSS). Craft had referred to the intention in a letter to Nabokov’s son Ivan.

  27 SCF (94), 123.

  28 DB, 179–80. The quoted text is sic in the original diary, inexplicably altered to “Leave for Los Angeles, hélas” for the published version.

  29 A photograph of the manuscript survives in UCLA, Morton (box 5), where it is described as “Lullaby for two flutes, for George and Mary Harris” and dated Christmas Eve 1955. Craft, however, dates the arrangement to 15 May 1960 and says that it was made for the architect Perry Neuschatz, who had designed an extension to the North Wetherly Drive house the previous month, and who was an amateur recorder-player. See IVSPA, 131, and SPD, 464.

  30 See SSCI, 396–7, for a summary of the relevant correspondence.

  31 Letter of 27 February 1956, quoted in ibid., 397. The first two words (apparently too much for SSC) are in English in the otherwise French original.

  32 See ibid., 397, for a list of the excerpts Stravinsky (or Craft) selected.

  33 See de Lauze, op. cit., 155.

  34 See Debussy’s letter of 25 August 1912 to André Caplet, in F. Lesure (ed.), Claude Debussy: Correspondance 1884–1918 (Paris: Hermann, 1993), 311.

  35 SCF (94), 124.

  36 Letters to Stravinsky, 4 and 10 April 1956 (PSS).

  37 Letter of 18 April 1956 (PSS, partly quoted in M&C, xvi).

  38 See her undated letter of “Friday,” June 1956, referring to “your remarks yesterday.” This can only have been the 22nd, so the recording was on the 21st.

  39 Aldous Huxley, “Conversation with Stravinsky,” in Vogue, 15 February 1953, 94–5, 127.

  40 The full transcript is in PSS. A substantial excerpt is in M&C, 17.

  41 Letter of “Friday.”

  42 DB, 180.

  43 See his letter of 27 October 1953 to Edouard Svitalski, quoted in DB, 93, note 7.

  44 DB, 179.

  45 Letter of 19 August 1956 to Stravinsky (PSS).

  46 SCF (94), 130–2. See also L. Morton, “Stravinsky in Los Angeles,” 84.

  47 SCF (94), 135; DB, 180.

  48 Sic in the original. DB, 180, once again rewrites Vera’s own English.

  49 “Stravinsky in Los Angeles;” also “Stravinsky at Home,” in Pasler (ed.), Confronting Stravinsky, 346.

  50 “Stravinsky in Los Angeles,” 84.

  51 Letter of 19 August.

  52 Telegram of 31 July 1956 to Boosey and Hawkes, in SSCIII, 401.

  53 “Stravinsky at Home,” 346.

  54 SCF (94), 138.

  55 The image is Craft’s, from ibid.

  56 SCF (94), 145; also SPD, plate 15 (following page 400), a photograph from 1957.

  57 Letter of Kirstein to Stravinsky, 31 August 1953, in SSCI, 287.

  58 Craft had conducted Kontra-punkte at a Monday Evening Concert on 20 February 1956, a concert Stravinsky almost certainly attended.

  59 See SCF (94), 139, for an irresistible account of this visit, which Craft, the present author, and the radio producer Andy Cartwright retraced in January 1995 for the BBC Radio 3 series, Conversations with Craft (CwC).

  60 SCF (94), 145.

  61 Letter of 1 May 1956, partly quoted in SPD, 434.

  62 SCF (94), 162.

  63 Franco Abbiati, “Strawinski dirige a Venezia il suo ‘Canticum Sacrum,’” Nuovo Corriere della sera, 14 September 1956. See also SCF (94), 145–6.

  64 P. Heyworth, “Stravinsky in Venice,” Observer, 16 September 1956.

  65 “Had the premiere performance taken place in the Fenice Theatre instead of in the Basilica,” one critic suggested, “some sort of demonstration undoubtedly would have occurred.” Christina Thoresby, “Stravinsky in Venice,” New York Times, 15 September 1956.

  66 SCF (94), 146; Craft talks about hundreds of people, but Stravinsky later told T. S. Eliot that only a few still remained, seated at tables. See Stephen Spender, Journals 1939–1983 (London: Faber, 1985), 184.

  23 THE ETERNAL FOOTMAN HOLDS HIS COAT

  1 Letter to Stravinsky of 3 November 1955 (PSS). Stein also wrote the first article about the Canticum Sacrum: see Tempo, 40 (Summer 1956), 3–5.

  2 Robert-E. Dunand, “Une création à Venise: Canticum Sacrum d’Igor Strawinsky,” Le Courrier de Génève, 26 September 1956.

  3 The Observer, 16 September 1956.

  4 Fred Goldbeck, “Le Cantique de Saint-Marc de Stravinsky,” Preuves, no. 69 (November 1956).

  5 Letter of 16 September 1956, in Chimènes (ed.), Francis Poulenc: Correspondance, 852–3. Stravinsky was in fact seventy-four at the time of the first performance. Poulenc, alas, would die ten years before reaching that age.

  6 SCF (94), 146. What follows is much indebted to this volume.

  7 He was certainly remarkably successful in concealing the attack from the concert audience. None of the reviews I have seen so much as mention the prolonged pause between the first and second movements, let alone any illness or general incapacity. Instead they draw attention to his economical style of conducting, perhaps significantly, since Stravinsky was normally active and athletic on the rostrum. According to the critic of the Telegraf (4 October), he “confined himself to essentials and simply gave the beat,” while Der Abend of 3 October described him as “a very painstaking conductor, who avoids exhibitionism and is alive only to the orchestra.” All reviews praise the playing, but I feel that Craft’s reservations—to put it no more strongly—ring true. See SCF (94), 147.

  8 See his letters of 11 and 23 October (PSS).

  9 CwC.

  10 SCF (94), 149.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Ibid., 162, 149.

  13 Letter of 2 July 1956 (PSS).

  14 See Souvtchinsky’s letters of 11 November and 22 December 1946, quoted in chapter 13, above.

  15 Evidence for this is circumstantial but convincing. In Are you the son …?, Soulima remarks how easy it was to trust Souvtchinsky, and how dangerous. In May 1945, Stravinsky wrote to his pianist son (in Paris) that he had had three letters from Souvtchinsky, none of which so much as mentioned Soulima’s name, an omission that—considering Souvtchinsky’s pastoral role in the prewar dispute between father and son—was certainly strange. Many years later, Boulez told Jesús Aguila that Stravinsky had resented Souvtchinsky’s treatment of Soulima over his alleged collaboration and that this was the cause of the breach between them. But Boulez adds, wrongly as we have seen, that the breach was healed by a meeting in 1952. See Aguila, Le Domaine musical, 45, note.

  16 See above, chapter 19 and note 34.

  17 P. Boulez, “Strawinsky demeure,” in P. Souvtchinsky (ed.), Musique Russe, vol. 1
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953), 221–2; English version taken (with small revisions) from the present author’s translation of the subsequent Boulez collection, Relevés d’apprenti: see “Stravinsky Remains,” in Stocktakings From an Apprenticeship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 108.

  18 Letter of 27 June 1953, in SSCII, 348 (the original is in BN Boulanger).

  19 Souvtchinsky, “Introduction,” in Musique Russe, vol. 1, 21–2 and note.

  20 Letter of 27 June.

  21 Aguila, Le Domaine musical, 43.

  22 Souvtchinsky, “A propos d’un retard,” Cahiers de la Compagnie Madeleine Renaud—Jean-Louis Barrault, 3 (1954), 7–24. See also Aguila, op. cit., 43–6.

  23 Ibid., 53 et seq. The title “Domaine Musical” was introduced for the second season, starting in February 1955.

  24 Letter of 23 March 1956 (PSS).

  25 See his letter of 22 November 1955 (PSS).

  26 SCF (1994), 151–2. The remark about the Ode to Napoleon was in fact made at dinner the next day.

  27 See “Trajectoires: Ravel, Stravinsky, Schönberg,” in Contrepoints, 6 (1949), 122-42; English translation by the present author in Stocktakings From an Apprenticeship (OUP, Oxford, 1991), 188–208.

  28 SCF (1994), 152–7.

  29 Ibid., 153. The French word for “boor” is “mufle,” which Craft, however, misspells “mouffle.” The conversation must have been in French as Souvtchinsky did not speak English, and one is mildly skeptical, therefore, about Craft’s lengthy translations of his remarks, within quotation marks. With Boulez, Craft notes elsewhere (ibid., 151), the conversation had been bilingual, each speaking his own language. The impression of linguistic fluency conveyed by the Souvtchinsky transcripts is thus suspect, to say the least.

  30 Aguila, Le Domaine musical, 43.

  31 It is just possible, though extremely unlikely, that Craft himself knew about the letter, a copy of which had been sent to the composer by the denazification authorities in Paris (see above, chapter 9, note 30, and relevant text; also chapter 12, note 32). What is altogether more likely is that Craft came across it subsequently, probably after Stravinsky’s death, when he was going through the archives and editing the composer’s correspondence for publication. The first published reference to the letter is in SSCI (1982). By contrast, the earlier reports of the Souvtchinsky lunch in R&C, 191–9, and SCF (72), 61–5, omit all mention of Soulima, who admittedly was still alive at the time. But since he died in 1994, almost at the precise moment that SCF (94) came out, his death cannot have been the reason for the material’s inclusion in that edition.